Why 2016 May Be Mitt Romney’s Year

One of the main problems with Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy was that it was never clear what he wanted to do if elected.

Mr. Romney’s case for himself was heavily bound up in his careers in consulting and private equity. He was the skilled manager who could identify problems, root out dysfunction and make anything work better. The guy who rescued the Olympics. The guy who led the search for his co-worker’s missing daughter. The Romney pitch was, in large part, about being manager-in-chief. It was a pitch with little policy content.

That didn’t fly in 2012. But it might actually work pretty well in 2016.

The 2012 election had to be about the big “what is government for?” questions because huge policy decisions loomed in 2013. The Affordable Care Act would be implemented, or not; parts of the Bush tax cuts would expire, or not; entitlements would be greatly reformed in an effort to shrink deficits, or not. A large fiscal adjustment was needed, if not right away, sometime within the next few years.

Whichever candidate won was going to have a lot of power to determine the shape of the federal government for years to come, so he had to talk about what he would have the government do.

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Mitt Romney, looking very much in campaign mode, with the attorney general of Georgia, Sam Olens, in Atlanta last week.CreditCurtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated Press

Barack Obama defended the principle that government ought to take a strong and active role in the economy, by using fiscal policy to offset the effects of recessions, by regulating the financial sector more tightly, by offering a near-universal health care entitlement, and by taxing the rich more.

Mr. Romney proved an awkward messenger for Republicans’ big idea that the government should tax and spend less, and not discourage people from working and supporting themselves. The “47 percent” speech — essentially, a declaration that we’d have to grow the economy by making Americans less lazy — was the clearest example of Mr. Romney offering a big-picture vision that did not sell.

That failure sounds like a good reason for Mr. Romney not to run again. But in 2016, he might actually be able to bracket the big ideological questions and run on the small stuff.

The big questions from 2012 mostly got resolved in 2013. Tax rates went up, the spending cuts known as sequestration went into effect, and the Affordable Care Act is proceeding. The federal budget deficit has fallen below $500 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that the national debt will be stable as a share of the economy over the next decade. As a result, Congress will probably leave the federal budget more or less on autopilot for the next several years.

The health act has already been de-emphasized in 2014 midterm campaigns, in part because the existence of popular provisions in the law makes it awkward for Republicans to demand repeal without specifying a clear replacement.

While “what will government do?” was very much an open question in 2012, greater policy certainty means there will be more room to run on “I’ll be a better manager” in 2016. That will be especially true if the news continues to be dominated by stories of managerial and technical failure in the government.

Healthcare.gov was plagued by “glitches.” The Secret Service let a man with an arrest record and a gun get in an elevator with the president, and a man with a knife get near the Obamas’ private residence. The Department of Veteran Affairs failed to provide timely medical care to sick veterans, then falsified records to hide that fact. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was overwhelmed by a surge of child migrants. The administration has faced criticism on coordinating response to Ebola in West Africa.

Even the big scandal obsessions of the conservative fever swamps — the Benghazi attack, the I.R.S. scandals and Fast & Furious — are, after you strip away the conspiracy theories, fundamentally stories about managerial failure. And while foreign policy debates obviously have huge ideological components, there’s a lot of room for dissatisfaction with this administration’s execution on its strategies in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Whether the increase in gaffes is real or just perceived, there have been a lot of news stories that might lead voters to say, “Gee, this looks like the sort of problem Mitt Romney might have handled better.”

Of course, to get to the point of making this case in a general election, Mr. Romney would first have to be renominated. The Republicans haven’t renominated a losing presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1968, but then, no losing Republican nominee has sought renomination during that time either.

In most of the last 50 years, there has been a clear heir apparent for the Republican nomination, whether a sitting vice president or a runner-up in a former primary campaign. The existence of a strong next-in-line candidate has been one reason not to try again. In this case, nobody is next in line. Especially if Jeb Bush does not run for the nomination, the Republican establishment figures who backed Mr. Romney in the last campaign will have no obvious place to go, putting him in an unusually good spot to seek renomination.

Candidates run all the time on airy ideas about leadership and competence, and win. Look at Rick Snyder’s election as governor of Michigan in 2010, or Mr. Romney’s own election as governor of Massachusetts in 2002. It’s standard to say Washington is “dysfunctional,” but that can mean several different things. If people mean the government has the wrong priorities, Mr. Romney has already shown his difficulty in convincing voters he has the right ones. But if people mean the government is not executing well on the priorities it has, Mr. Romney may find himself on favorable ground.